


Daddy Issues

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Beer, Coulson Thinks Skye Is The Best Thing Ever, Coulson has Daddy Issues, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Future Fic, Getting Together, Kissing, Late Night Conversations, Skye and her Huge Crush on Coulson, Skye is not an innocent little girl, Skye is not looking for a family, Skye's dad, coulson family feels, tiny mention of past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-19
Updated: 2014-09-19
Packaged: 2018-02-18 01:00:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2329475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye and Coulson share a late night beer and talk about fathers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daddy Issues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skyepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/gifts).



Busted, Skye thinks.

She didn't expect the Director would be walking into the kitchen after midnight.

"It's okay," she says, when Coulson gives the bottle of beer in her hand a look. "I'm still doing the hack, I'm not neglecting my job, it's just, after today..."

He nods. He doesn't look like he is going to chew her head off for being unprofessional. To be fair, it's been a long time since he's chewed anyone's head off, or has commented on anyone's professionality or lack thereof. 

"I understand," he says.

He takes a seat on the stool next to her.

He stares at Skye for a moment, so much that it's beginning to make her nervous. She doesn't know what he wants.

"Aren't you going to ask me if I'm okay?"

"Would you tell me if you weren't?"

"Yes," Skye says, because it's Coulson, of course it's _yes_. "I would."

He nods again, like he's grateful for the hypothetical honesty.

He stays with Skye for a while, as she finishes the task.

"I don't want you to think I would drink on the job," she tells him, only half-teasing. "But really, if a girl can't have a drink the day she discovers her father is an agomaniacal mass-murdering alien..."

She thought he would at least smile at her levity. He should have been expecting it, right? This is what she does, after all. This is what she has always done.

Instead Coulson looks at her in a really strange way. It reminds her of something. It reminds her of his face when she gave him all of the team's badges, the day they left the Hub as fugitives, the day they ended up in Providence. Yes, it's that same face.

He draws a long breath.

"My father was a criminal," he tells her. He watches her reaction. "SHIELD sealed those records when I was recruited. I don't think anyone but Director Fury knows about this anymore, everybody else is dead. Well, Director Fury and now you."

For a moment she doesn't know what to say. She remembers his expression that one time she brought up the matter of his father in his presence. Skye really didn't want to see that expression ever again. A part of her likes the idea that he has shared this with her so exclusively – _and now you_ – but a much bigger part of her just wishes she didn't have to know about any hardship in his life. She doesn't handle that kind of information very well.

She goes to the fridge and gets another beer. "I realize this breaks several hundred SHIELD rules, probably but here... I think you need this as much as I do."

He accepts her offer without hesitation. "Thanks."

He turns the bottle in his hand, pensive, waiting for Skye to talk, maybe.

"I had no idea," she tells him. "Your file just said his death was a defining moment for you."

He looks up at her again. Suddenly it occurs to Skye that they are sitting pretty close and she doesn't know why, and it seems even closer because of the nature of the conversation, and because of the late hour and how alone it feels down here, the soft humming of the fridge as the only noise around them. 

Then Coulson starts talking again: "His _whole life_ was a defining moment for me, that's what the file should have said. Petty criminal, then not so petty. Then he got in with a really bad crowd. A really bad crowd that was on SHIELD's radar."

It takes Skye a moment to realize what he means by that.

"SHIELD killed your father?"

"They weren't interested in my father, just his boss. But there was a firefight..."

"I'm so sorry," she says, wishing she had something more intelligent to say, something which would actually help.

"My father was a bad man, Skye. He came from a difficult environment but that's no excuse."

She leans back in her chair, taking a good look at the man. The entirety of him.

"I think I understand a lot about you now."

"What do you mean?" Coulson asks.

"Your daddy issues," she explains. "Your desire to please Fury. Your worry about Ace Peterson. Your obsession with Captain Rogers, American's favourite son. That's what you want to be. You've been playing the role of the good son all this time. Because your father was bad, because you want to prove you're not your father's son, so you've been looking for other fathers."

Coulson just stares at her. 

"I'm sorry," she says. "The last thing you probably need is cheap psychology from a junior agent."

"No, that's really insightful. I think there's a great profiler in you. But I thought this was going to be your pity party, not mine."

"We can share," she says, and it comes out a bit more flirty than she intended. Which is really bad, because one is not supposed to be flirting over the subject of shitty parents. So much for her great insight.

There's a beat.

Or a succession of beats.

It's not exactly charged and Coulson doesn't seem to have noticed her tone, or at least he doesn't seem bothered by it. He looks like he is still thinking about his father. Everything makes so much sense now, Skye thinks. _Everything_. It's almost striking it didn't occur to her before, this exact scenario, because it's like pieces falling into place. Coulson has always been a weird man, but it turns out there's a perfectly logical explanation for that. Skye doesn't mind the weirdness, but she doesn't want to see Coulson haunted by something like this.

"Well, maybe we're both better off without our fathers," she offers. A pause. "I've never really wanted one, anyway. Look, without getting into details, a couple of foster fathers I had put me off the whole having-a-father-figure idea, completely, for good. What I mean is, fathers are overrated anyway, don't angst over it. Good riddance."

Coulson hesitates and she hopes he is not offended by it. And she hopes he's not to worried about the sudden insight into her past, that wasn't the point, either. But he holds his bottle up in the end, agreeing.

"I had never seen it that way," he admits.

They stay a moment in silence and it's... it's good. Skye thinks so. Lately their interactions have been a bit stilted, even after Coulson stopped hiding in his office, like they are not so used to each other anymore. There is a tension which wasn't before – Skye doesn't know if it's a bad tension or a good tension. But ever since they started finding out about her father and his plans they have grown closer again, Coulson has been paying more attention.

He moves his hand to loosen his tie a bit and she likes that, that he can relax in front of her, even when they are talking about something so painful.

She watches his profile for a moment, while Coulson looks at nowhere in particular, throwing his head back a little when he takes another gulp of the beer.

"And I don't know," she says, and he turns to face her. "I find it kind of romantic in a way, a Dickensian way, the idea of both of us being orphans."

She watches his brow furrow. "I never saw it that way either."

"Well..." she leaves her bottle on the table, shifting closer to him, though they are close enough as it is. "I have. But maybe I'm just always looking for ways in which we are similar."

Coulson looks down at his hands for a moment.

"These last few months have been proof that maybe you shouldn't want to be like me anymore," he tells her.

He's got it all backwards, as he often does. He's wrong about his failures, and wrong about Skye's reasons too.

"It's not so much the wanting to be like you anymore," she corrects him, "as the general _liking_ I have for you."

She's being bold and at first he seems like he doesn't get it. So Skye gets bolder and leans into him, pressing her knee to his thigh and closing her mouth over his. He kisses back almost immediately (which is good! a voice inside Skye says, a younger, more insecure version of the woman she's now, the woman who fell in love with Phil Coulson), shifting in his seat as well, awkwardly trying to put down his drink. Skye can feel the tangy taste of the beer between them and it makes it all seem more normal somehow. It feels bafflingly normal, like any other first kiss. She's nervous. They are just two people at the beginning of something. He's nervous. They don't have to be agents of SHIELD right now, they don't even have to be Skye and Coulson. They can just be a girl and the guy she's into, kissing very nicely for a moment. She just enjoys it, there's something delicate about it, the carefulness of it, and Coulson lets her bite his lip softly before pulling back with an amused, fond chuckle.

"Sorry," Skye says. "Did I totally freak you out right now?"

He doesn't look freaked out (which is good! again with the voice). Even the usual embarrassment of the moment after a first kiss feels normal and nice, full of possibility instead of full of doubt.

"No, I'm curious."

"Just curious?"

He smiles. Skye notices his lips are pink now, from that little bit of kissing. Well, pink _er_ than usual. She can't tell him how long she's spent looking at those lips.

"A lot of things apart from curious," he clarifies appreciatively. "But I guess this answers a couple of questions."

"What? You didn't know? Come on, Coulson, I just cannot believe that."

"I didn't know." She's stunned. She thought she was being pretty obvious and he was just being nice not commenting on it. "Sometimes you would look at me like you were interested, but I could never tell if it was real interest or if it was just the fact that – Us? We don't interact like normal people."

"I would look at you, uh?"

She thinks he might even blush. Instead it's that lopsided smirk he gives her sometimes. She guesses _this_ answers a couple of questions for her as well.

"The night we started staying in that motel, after Ward took you. I thought..." he looks away, like he's ashamed at having assumed. "But then I thought you might have just been grateful"

"I wasn't! I mean, of course I was grateful. Despite my reputation it's not everyday a guy launches into a Hollywood style rescue to get me out of Nazi hell. So yeah, I was grateful that night, but that's not why I was looking at you _like that_."

He seems relieved. It just never occurred to Skye that he might have been as much in the dark as she was. But she doesn't have that unreadable, Agent/Director face Coulson has. This doesn't make any sense.

"What are you thinking?" he asks, covering her hand with his over the table, and brushing his thumb over the grooves of her knuckle. God, she loves that. The tenderness of the gesture, the hesitation and the warmth. For some reason she always knew Coulson would be this sweet in a romantic situation. It's one of the things that made her _curious_ about him in the first place.

"I'm thinking I've had enough of the DVD commentary on this thing," she tells him, leaning into him until their mouths are almost touching. She hopes she manages to sound sexy. "Now I want the main feature."

It's better than the first kiss – which is definitely good and Skye doesn't need a voice inside her head to tell her so – because they are a bit more confident about it, secure in the knowledge that the other feels the same. Coulson still lets her lead, opening his mouth to her desires, reading her rhythm so perfectly, no more awkward angles. Skye touches her fingertips along the length of his tie, feeling a bit self-conscious about the fact that she has had some vivid fantasies about what she'd want to do with those ties of his, what she'd do to him. Suddenly she gets very excited about the prospect of sharing those fantasies with Coulson, sharing anything, actually. That's what she meant with the orphans comment, that she was happy not to go through that alone – they have been bruised but they are okay as people, and now they are kissing, and Skye has to admit that's the ideal scenario. Coulson wraps his hand around Skye's hip, still very carefully, but also full of lust. It's shocking, Skye admits, to think he wants her like that. Because she spent so long second-guessing herself, and thinking she was probably just imagining things. But no, he's definitely interested, the way he is holding her and leaning against her until he has their bodies almost touching, almost pressed aginst each other in a very precise manner. Skye twists one hand experimentally, into his shirt, to draw him against her and deepen the kiss, and she licks the roof of his mouth until Coulson lets out a happy sigh that is really more like a moan and Skye has to open her eyes to check that it's really him here with her, that this is really happening.

It _really_ happens for a little longer.

When she pulls back Coulson is seriously flustered, something thats look bizarre and wonderful on him, his face betraying what Skye already knows by the state of his clothes.

"What are _you_ thinking?" she whispers.

"I'm thinking..." he looks around. "I'm thinking I want to take this somewhere a lot more private, if you don't mind."

Those words, that voice, go straight between Skye's legs, launching a thousand images she has probably been keeping locked inside her head as a self-preservation tactic. She wants that voice to say all sorts of dirty things to her.

"Really?" she asks. He nods. "Wow, I didn't think it'll be this easy."

Coulson shrugs, still with the smirk, all charming as fuck, and Skye feels really really dumb for even liking a guy this much. She forgot how that felt. She forgets if this has happened before. Love is one thing, and that has always been there with Coulson. But the other thing, well, she really is silly, but she just adores him.

"I'm an easy guy," he teases her.

Skye crosses her arms. "I thought you were going to read me the SHIELD protocols, or tell me you were too old for me."

"I'm not old." 

She can't help but laugh at how comically hurt he looks.

"Old _er_ then. I thought you'd say something like that."

His expression changes and she thinks she can see the shadow of a doubt in his gaze.

"Am I?" he asks. "Too old for you. Is that what you think?"

Skye fights the instinct to snort because really, the kiss(es) should have left him no doubts about that. But she doesn't want to make fun of him – she has her own insecurities and she hopes Coulson can be gentle when the time comes for him to deal with them, which could be in just a few minutes. She's sure he will be.

She reaches out for him and threads her hand into his hair. Sure, he's balding and now her fingers are threading those gray bits in his hair, but with the lives they lead? Skye doesn't feel like being superficial.

"You're just as old or young as you are," she says, shrugging as well. "And that makes you exactly the guy I'm interested in right now."

That seems to bring him back from his gloomy mood, back to that smirk, and he leans into Skye trying to get some more of that kissing. 

But she pulls away. "What about protocol? Where's the big speech about not making things personal, and rules and endangering the team?"

"It's always been personal with you," he says, moving to catch her mouth for a moment. It doesn't taste of beer anymore. "As for protocols... I've spent months obsessed by rules and responsibility. By what I thought I had to do versus what felt right. And that almost cost this team everything."

"Coulson..." she says, stroking his cheek, unable to see him disappointed at himself, sad. Skye decides she is not going to let him be sad, at least not tonight. Tonight he is going to be happy and making love to her, that's how it should be. Not this.

His expression softens at her touch and his gaze tells her he really appreciates it. At this point they could have this whole conversation without words, but Skye likes it when he says this stuff. Despite her protestations she likes the DVD commentary of it all, it makes her feel less alone.

"It's true. So... no protocols. Just what we feel is right. I trust your judgement." He takes her hand in his. It's still a thrill, every touch between them. Skye can barely stand the excitement it gives her, knowing she can touch him and he would like it. He brings it to his mouth and kisses her fingertips, one by one. "Do you think this is a good idea?"

"I think it's the most amazing idea any of us have ever had," she tells him. "And I think the next two hours are going to be spectacular."

" _Two_ hours?"

"I'm a girl of great ambition, A.C."

"Don't you mean _D.C._?" he asks, raising a flirty eyebrow, because yeah, he does that, she wasn't imagining things all this time.

She shakes her head. "Nah. Between us, you're always going to be _A.C._ "

She stands up from the stool first, waiting for him.

Coulson looks at the hand she's offering and she swears it's the first time she's seen the man look remotely shy. She likes it. It means he's really trying.

It means he is going to try, for her.

She takes his hand and leads him out of the kitchen.

She hopes she can convice him with this, that it's not so bad being orphans, as long as they can share the burden.


End file.
